Review: B. B. King - The Blues (1958)
Tracks: 1) Why Do Things Happen To Me; 2) Ruby Lee; 3) When My Heart Beats Like A Hammer; 4) Past Day; 5) Boogie Woogie Woman; 6) Early In The Morning; 7) I Want To Get Married; 8) That Ain’t The Way To Do It; 9) Troubles, Troubles, Troubles; 10) Don’t You Want A Man Like Me; 11) You Know I Go For You; 12) What Can I Do.
REVIEW
Perhaps Crown Records made a small marketing mistake when they placed the absolute majority of King’s hit singles on one and the same LP: Singin’ The Blues did become the definitive sample of the man’s 1950s studio sound, but it also squeezed most of the golden eggs from the hen in one go. And with the LP format steadily gaining in popularity, the Bihari brothers, who were in charge of Modern Records and all its subsidiaries, had no choice but to go back to the stockpiles and load the subsequent albums with former commercial flops, obscure B-sides and generally stuff of uneven quality — as usual, paying no attention whatsoever to proper chronological sequencing and making us guess about the specific motives behind each single inclusion.
Ironically, this sweep across the vaults means that The Blues ends up being somewhat more than just the blues — because while the record-buying public knew very well what it wanted from B. B. King (scorching electric blues leads), B. B. King himself did not particularly fancy the status of a one-trick pony. With this selection, it is easier to see traces of stylistic versatility and occasional adaptation to the times — a rather far cry from the strictly hardcore blues, blues-de-luxe, and blues ballad program on the debut LP. It’s not necessarily good adaptation, and you cannot always blame the public for wanting to stick to the tried and true, but it is one thing to purchase a new 12-bar blues single every few months, and quite another to go through an entire album of rigid 12-bar blues in one go, right?
So, from as early as 1950 we feature ‘Don’t You Want A Man Like Me’, with a danceable, mambo-influenced, percussion-drenched rhythm which B. B. then skillfully converts into jump-blues for the bridge section — an innovative as heck approach for the time; but since the song does not even have a guitar solo, letting the rhythm and the brass sections take over completely, nobody cared, patiently waiting for the much more predictable, but much more guitar-ish ‘3 O’Clock Blues’ to bring the young showman his first bout of fame. Five years later, in 1955, the B-side ‘Ruby Lee’ repeated the mambo trick with the same change in tempo midway through the song — this time, the song had much more guitar in it, but the public still did not want their boy going all Cuban on their asses.
Elsewhere, we see B. B. try out the classic boogie sound: ‘Boogie Woogie Woman’, a B-side from late 1952, also features no lead guitar, ceding its place to Amos Milburn-style barrelhouse piano rolls and a loud sax solo. ‘That Ain’t The Way To Do It’, which was actually the B-side to ‘3 O’Clock Blues’, is a bit more agreeable, with King finally playing a rather laconic solo at the end of the song, but here, too, the emphasis is clearly on getting the crowd up on its feet and dancing, rather than admiring the guitar player’s nimble fingers.
By 1956, that old-fashioned boogie sound is seen morphing into something more closely resembling modern Chuck Berry-style rock’n’roll, specifically on ‘Early Every Morning’ (sometimes titled ‘Early In The Morning’) — although the song is still structured as a fast 12-bar blues, King’s licks on here have more points of connection to Chuck Berry’s soloing style than before (of course, Chuck’s guitar playing itself grew out of mastering blues licks); basically, this is as rock’n’roll as the man would ever get in his life, which is not saying much — B. B. King was always too conservative and laid-back to allow the true fires of rock’n’roll to contaminate his spirit — but there is something to be appreciated about the god of blues de-luxe speeding up and showering you with a flurry of happy-agitated notes. These solos certainly kick less ass than Chuck, but this is mainly because they are far more complex and disciplined, and that can at least be respected.
‘Early In The Morning’ was actually an A-side, but it did not chart. In order to chart, a B. B. King song had to be a slow blues, so the only classic-commercial hit on The Blues is, understandably, the very slow blues-de-luxe ‘When My Heart Beats Like A Hammer’ (from 1954), a classic King number which is simply not too interesting in its original three-minute studio version; seek out various live performances to see which ways it could go when properly let out of the bottle. Two more slightly less famous chart successes are from 1957: ‘I Want To Get Married’ has a beautifully sharp and wobbly guitar tone, the exact kind that Eric Clapton would be elevating further around 1965, and ‘Troubles, Troubles, Troubles’ opens with a funny New Orleanian blast of brass which makes me wonder if this recording could in any way influence Elvis’ own ‘Trouble’ (a vastly different song altogether) in King Creole one year later. (This would require Leiber and Stoller listening to B. B. King, but why the hell not?).
On the whole, however, do not expect too many strong surprises: even the «different» styles that I tried to describe are really just subtle nuances. Given, however, just how many songs here feature next to no lead guitar, I would think that the titles of Singin’ The Blues and The Blues should probably have been reversed — I mean, B. B. King in his younger days always had as strong aspirations about being an expressive singer as about being a guitar player, but it is only on this LP that you begin to understand just how important that aspect of his showmanship was to his blossoming ego.
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